


recipes

by aussie (orphan_account)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 03:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1372360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/aussie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>recipes for monsters that hide under beds and love left unrequited. read these on a sunny day if you need some rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. recipe for aoba

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> your birth was the last horseman riding in for the apocalypse

step one: hit rock bottom.  
collect the most jagged stones and  
press them as hard into your palm  
as you can.

step two: fuck strangers and  
snort a line and come home at  
5am with a black eye and  
bruised knuckles.  
when your grandmother sneers  
say, “at least i come home”.

step three: pretend you don’t  
see the hurt on her face.

step four: fuck yourself over.  
you are a human train wreck.  
let yourself be.  
fuck yourself over.  
it’ll be the best thing that  
ever happens to you.

step five: when they release you from the hospital  
avoid the gazes of people you used to know.  
try not to think too hard.

step six: do it anyway.

step seven: snag another dead end job.  
tie your hair up and put on your happy face.  
ignore the itch underneath your skin  
ignore the ache in your bones  
ignore the idea that  
destruction is a creative urge.

step eight: when he looks away  
count the scars that you can see.  
when he doesnt know youre watching  
memorise the ones you usually cant.  
memorise the ones that wont heal or fade.  
when he leaves tonight you will feel  
all the stars fall from the sky.  
you will close your eyes like an eclipse and  
breathe out a sigh of sulfur.

step nine: don’t ignore the paranoia.  
don’t let yourself scream under the needle.

step ten: shred your heart and  
feed pieces of it to him.  
they can send you to the morgue  
without anything in your chest  
as long as he’s not broken.  
untangle the hair and  
caress him into calluses.

step eleven: think about midnight  
with him hung over your balcony  
a cigarette hanging from his lips.  
you’re leaning against the door frame  
and he’s staring at the stars  
like he’s looking for the answer to some  
unsolved cosmic question.  
you wish he would look at you instead.

step twelve: do not give in.

step thirteen: when he kisses you,  
kiss back for all you’re worth.  
grind your bones together until  
you’re one being and realise  
you couldn’t picture it any other way.

when you dream he’ll leave again  
remind yourself that you’re not psychic.

step fourteen: he will cut your hair and you’ll let him  
and you’ll whisper “i love you”s until  
both your voices are hoarse.


	2. recipe for koujaku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there are thoughts that won't leave you alone.

step one: memorise your mothers laugh  
and marvel in her sunlit smile.   
she will be gone one day.

step two: hold a small hand in yours  
and i mean a  _small_  hand.  
untangle hair from branches  
and give piggy back rides when requested.

step three: become well acquainted with pain.  
become well acquainted with loss.  
youll experience both regardless so  
you might as well get friendly. 

step four: forget your mothers laugh  
forget your mothers smile  
these things will hurt you.

step five: focus on another smile.

step six: go home.

step seven: your burdens are literally on your shoulders  
but try to remember they dont  _really_  weigh anything.  
try not to remember that scars heal and fade  
but these wont.

step eight: have a cigarette when the world gets too tough.

step nine: pry hair from curious fingers and  
resist the urge to grab his hand.  
go home with a blonde and  
put your mind somewhere else.  
clean the bedsheets in the morning.

step ten: be well acquainted with loss but  
fight it where you can. fight for what you love and  
for who you love and   
protect what you have with everything you have.

step eleven: get angry. get fucking angry.  
drown in mistakes and drown in your guilt  
breathe them in like smoke but dont exhale  
dig your teeth into the world and take a bite  
take a giant fucking bite.

you will be angry and   
then you wont be.

step twelve: the first time he kisses you is  
not going to be the last time. don’t expect this.  
let it surprise you. cherish it.

step thirteen: smile when you cut his hair  
because you are well acquainted with loss  
and you know that sometimes  
its just a means for you to gain something new.


	3. recipe for mizuki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how many times do you have to fall in love to learn that it's a losing game?

step one: recognize that you are a blue fingertipped boy  
and that you are running out of places to hide.  
you ink lower case letters into the skin of a  
man you know won’t last the week and  
you can’t say a word.

step two: but who cares about the white noise in your head?  
the men eventually come for you too   
and they caress their thumbs over your cheeks  
and immediately  
you know something you love is going to be taken away.

you know something you love is going to be taken away so  
you might as well do this right for once. set the records straight.

step three: take your last look at the way the muscles move  
underneath his skin and keep those in mind when  
you give away everything you’d worked so hard for.

step four: let them turn you into a walking corpse  
and tilt your head back when they press their needles to your neck.  
give them a good view of your throat.  
this is hard enough as it is  
no reason to make it worse.

step five: a hundred ghosts follow hungry in your footsteps  
and they are all out for blood. try to forget that you put them there.

step six: this is a hallucination and you’re okay with that.  
he sinks into your bones like winter and all you want is for him  
to dress your walking corpse in warm clothes   
squeeze your wrist until you feel alive again.

remember the nights you spent with him pressed into your side  
head on your shoulder, fingers entwined with yours.  
you were car crash boys taking solace in being with another person  
who had messed up just as badly.

you would pull all your teeth if it meant  
he would get you out of this.

step seven: think that maybe  
you are not mature enough  
to handle yourself.  
you are an autopsy by  
an underground doctor  
you are the third person  
to use this needle today  
you are hiding in your hood  
hiding under tables  
clawing at skin  
whispering  
chanting   
his name like a prayer  
blood smeared over your jaw  
down your throat  
over your chest.  
  
the plot points are starting to blur and  
you don’t think this is what redemption feels like.

step eight: when he breaks you  
try not to feel betrayed.

step nine: they keep you in the hospital   
and when he shows up you’ve been rehearsing your lines for weeks  
but in the end the most eloquent way you can put it is  
"i’m sorry".

he reaches out for your hand  
and you take his without even thinking.


	4. recipe for mink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> your mother would slap you for this.

step one: braid your mothers hair every morning.  
she’ll half-heartedly push you away, but you have  
your father’s sense of responsibility. “you have  
his stubbornness, you mule,” she’ll murmur.   
  
ignore the way she spreads her stiff fingers  
as you pull back her graying curls. ignore the  
look of disdain she gives them. ignore the  
way she glances back at the empty spot in the bed  
where your father used to sleep next to her.

love her as best you can. 

step two: when they come,   
hide the children.   
shush the sobs   
let them huddle   
as close to you  
as they need to.

when they come for the children  
scream until your throat is raw.

step three: refuse to tell them anything.

step four: realise you need to tell them some things.

step five: sink into the fire lit beneath your skin  
and let the rage burning through your soul consume you whole.  
  
know that letting you go was the worst mistake they could’ve made.  
relish in this.

step six: he is death personified and   
he is so easy to control.   
you have death in your hands  
death at your beck and call.  
wonder where this death was  
when you needed him most.

step seven: your emotional wounds are so old   
that they are festering, attracting flies, maggots.  
pray to every god you know. pray to any god   
that will listen. you have your mothers eyes   
and you know you’re doing her kindness   
an injustice. with your hands around his throat,  
you know she wouldn’t be proud.

step eight: let death spark life in you.

step nine: as it all collapses   
gargle with blood and spit out a tooth  
that isnt yours.   
you bear the wounds of an entire people  
of people you knew, people you cherished  
of bodies burnt and souls lost.   
as it all collapses   
swear you hear their voices.  
  
as it all collapses  
decide to go home.

step ten: in the depths of midnight  
think of him and the weight you  
forced him to carry.   
  
maybe you don’t have your father’s sense of responsibility.

step eleven: don’t be surprised when he finds you.  
his existence is written into yours, he is stitched into your veins.

you don’t think this could’ve gone any other way.  
  
step twelve: take him home.

step thirteen: feel tensions unravel and  
stop setting metaphorical on fires and  
start lighting some real ones.   
he always forgets to put one on.

step fourteen: be content that  
the first time you exchange “i love you”s  
will be in the dark, on opposite sides of the bed.

he will say it again in the morning.

step fifteen: braid his hair every morning  
he’ll lean into your hands, sigh into your touch.  
"i’m going to make pancakes," he’ll mumble and  
sometimes you’ll think you could cry at the domesticity.

love him as best you can. 


	5. recipe for sei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you have nothing to give anyone.

step one: the first time a needle is pressed into your veins,  
scream for all you are worth.  sometimes you think thats not very much   
but  
your test tube baby body has been used to build an empire.   
you are the ground this corruption was founded on.  
allow yourself to believe that even trapped here  
you are the one playing them.

step two: ask your golden boy visitors for all the books  
that they could possibly carry. unsure expressions will  
cross their faces— small furrows of the brow,  
twitches of the lip. “we’ll see”.

the next time they come they stand on either side of you  
and slide thin books out of their coats.   
"we snuck these in"  
"they’re for you"

step three: always ask for poetry   
and theyll always give it to you  
and only read the poems about love  
they dont teach you much but they assure you that  
somewhere out there  
life is still beautiful  
untouched by needles  
scalpels  
and whatevers loaded in  
your IV. 

step four: allow yourself to be plied into numbness with  
empty words and meaningless gifts. open your mouth  
for the chocolate they feed you, one after the other,  
and close your lips around the tips of their fingers.   
smile like you are content to feel nothing.

step five: let your mind carry your feet off the ground.  
sink so far inward that when they bury your body,  
there’ll be no soul to put at rest.   
  
you’re rotten at your core and everyone knows it.  
they prick your fingertips and you   
don’t feel a thing.

step six: there is ink smeared across your fingertips   
and over your gaze. your bones are made of pearl   
and you have eyes like death. your skin is smooth marble.   
you are the captive princess of the bone throne.  
sink into every room you have ever been in.  
become every connection you can make.

step seven: know that the day of your birth  
a galaxy burnt out  
stars fell apart and moons turned to ash  
cultures were set ablaze and an entire dimension  
caught fire. 

you rebuilt all of these  
and you rebuilt them  _better_.

step eight: when you find him  
envision a noose made   
of gold tightening around   
your neck. the end of the   
rope is tied around his wrist.

step nine: spend your last night  
dreaming. breathe constellations into  
a world of lavender grey grass and  
imagine the way he could unravel worlds  
with his voice. you are standing bare in a church  
and choirs upon choirs of him are ringing through  
your head.  _destroy me_.  _please, destroy me_.

step ten: open the lock to the heart.

step eleven: the tower will collapse and  
you will feel your blood curdling.  
no one will come for you and  
no one will even think to.   
he is your noose and  
you’ve never been more thankful.

step twelve: briefly, think of them.  
the only thing you have left to give is poetry and dead hair  
so goodbye, golden boys. goodbye rotten hearted golden haired boys  
goodbye salt water prince  
goodbye, goodbye. you’re never coming back.  
you know no one thought this day would ever come.


	6. recipe for clear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clean the oil off your fingers one last time. take a bow. show overs, everyone out.

step one: go online.  
your first form is a heap of   
exposed wires and lines of coding.  
even like this  
it’ll take you years to realise you’re not human.

step two: the first time they screw on your face plate  
try to claw it off.  
you’re told this is called a “malfunction”.  
they’ll try to program it out of you.

when they can’t, they’ll try to scrap you.  
they can’t manage that either.

your grandfather teaches you that  
a love is a force to be reckoned with.

step three: sing in the morning, sing at night.  
sing leant over the stove and press your fingers into the hot pans.  
"don’t touch that!" and you’ll pull them back immediately.  
you don’t know much about yourself but  
you know enough to mumble, “the sensors in my hands are fine”.

step four: your thoughts are mechanical and  
your dreams are stained with oil  
held into place with bolts. 

as such, it’s understandable that  
mortality is a foreign concept to you.

the first time you experience death  
it’s a dog laying on the side of the road  
deep gashes in its side. 

you don’t know what to do  
and you don’t know what’s happening  
but when you sing it to sleep you  
think maybe you’ve done something right.

step five: sing your grandfather to sleep for the last time.  
come face to face with mortality and say, “i don’t understand”.  
don’t understand it, but accept it anyway.

step six: when you hear his voice,  
feel the gears turning and   
swear the heart you don’t have  
skips a beat.

step seven: he makes you short circuit  
but you don’t mind malfunctioning for him.

step eight: when you take off the mask  
hold the breath you don’t have.

step nine: when he thinks you’re beautiful,  
nearly malfunction out of disbelief alone.

step ten: sing because  
you can fix a robot but  
humans aren’t so easily mended.

you have dragged him into  
your mess of oil and gears  
of screws, of bolts, of wires  
so here’s his chance to  
carry himself out.

protocol is heart break  
but breaking it feels  
just as bad.

step eleven: break yourself and  
realise that you aren’t permanent either.  
mortality comes to all things that can  
experience sentiment and with your  
hands running over his sides, know  
that you’re fucked. 

in the story books your grandfather used to read  
love was a force that could mend broken bones  
but now you know that love  _is_  broken bones  
love has teeth and doesn’t listen to anyone.

a dead moon hangs from your jaws and  
looking at him you think,  _angel, love can’t save me now_.  
he is a love poem where you are an obituary.

step twelve: the sensors in your hands are going  
but touch everything you can anyway. memorise the   
curve of his waist, the perk of his hips the  
way your name drops from his mouth.

you’ll disappear into his coffee  
into seafoam into  
the second between  
a blink  
or two cars  
colliding.

into a memory.

you can be okay with this.

step thirteen: imagine transferring  
words through contact.

your hand on his thigh is “i don’t  
know what to do”. 

his hips against yours are  
"that’s okay".

step fourteen: don’t expect to come back.


	7. recipe for noiz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> deciding to love someone was playing russian roulette with every chamber loaded.

step one: hurt yourself   
hurt others   
  
step two: know they have no intention of  
letting you out. piss yourself every couple hours  
and give the wall a weak kick. it doesnt hurt.  
it doesnt echo. your piss is the warmest thing you know.

step three: when the house keeper allows you a butter knife  
think about digging it into her neck and serving her head  
to your parents on a silver platter. 

step four: rehearse for weeks even if in the end  
the most eloquent way you can put it is also the simplest:  
youre lonely.   
  
you would let someone slit your throat  
just for the few seconds of contact.   
  
step five: youre seventeen and  
youre standing in the kitchen and remembering   
when you spelt your name with the letters on the fridge.

now youre imagining bleeding  
bleeding blood too dark to be human   
but too red to be anything but  
and youre imagining dragging your finger through your  
own not-human-not-monster   
blood.

step six: youre seventeen and youre leaving.

step seven: listen to cars zoom by on the highway  
those people that go to work too early or get home too late  
those drunk men racing home to their wives,   
drunk men writing their own obituaries.   
drunk men with dead sons and not much more left to lose  
those teenagers who pretend to be gods   
and will sneak in through their bedroom windows   
before their parents wake up.  
the teenager you never got to be.

step eight: leave the country.

step nine: curl next to a stranger and think  
a dead body would feel warm compared to yours.

step ten: see him and think he is  
the personification of playing russian roulette  
with every chamber loaded.

you’re obsessed.

step eleven: the next time you meet is not  
nearly as exciting. but the third? oh,  
the third is getting there.

step twelve: you realise something is wrong when  
you want to do more than fuck him.

step thirteen: decide that maybe you  
dont want pain at all. specifically,   
you dont want the sort of pain you feel in your heart.  
you dont think you can take   
metaphorically smashed ribcages and   
lungs that are full of emotional sea water.   
you dont know whos drowning you—  
him, or you. 

step fourteen: breathe metaphorical smoke into his ear  
and force a grin. you weren’t scared of death until   
you felt the first aches of a broken bone.

step fifteen: when he leaves your hospital room wonder:   
what happened to me?   
you never knew how tired you were   
of walking the line  
between human and something less  
until you picked a side.

step sixteen: the last time you see him,  
let him lace his fingers with yours  
even against your better judgement. 

step seventeen: when you leave  
steal his heart and give yours  
as collateral. 

step eighteen: know youll be back.


	8. recipe for ren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> worry has always been your song to sing.

step one: learn straight off the bat that  
worry is your song to sing and no one elses.

the words are not beautiful but  
you say them anyway. you sing a song with  
bits of gut and chunks of bone stirred in.

step two: learn a little later that  
no one is listening.

step three: watch him wash blood  
off his hands and pass the time by  
musing over the sensation. theres not  
a teaspoon of blood in your body.

realise the fragility of a body with bones.

step four: want to say “this is a suicide mission”  
but you have an eternal faith set deep within him  
and you dont think you could ever use words to  
wrong him.

step five: when he wants to go on a suicide mission  
go with him.

step six: imagine scenarios in which  
you can walk through the bedroom door  
and be eye to eye with him. 

step seven: imagine scenarios in which  
you make him bleed. your data is fraying  
at the edges and there are holes in  
your knowledge. 

step eight: yes yes yes no  
yes yes yes no  
yes yes no   
no yes  
no no yes  
no no  
yes.

step nine: learn that  
even for both your efforts  
things dont always go as planned.

in times like these,  
you learn to improvise.

step eleven: creation   
has a voice like wind chimes  
and if you had skin youd feel  
the warmth of summer  
embracing you.

you reply with worry and  
creation proposes a compromise.  
you dont even have time to agree  
before youre waking up.

step twelve: wake up and  
barely come to youre barely awake  
but he is here and so are you  
so you can disregard that.

step thirteen: the lights are  
too bright and you think that  
maybe someone has put the sun  
in your hospital room. sounds seem  
to echo off the walls and your voice  
is so, so hoarse, its buried so deep that  
you cant find it. mouth his name and

step fourteen: pull him closer.

you’re home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> a big thank you to everyone on tumblr who enjoyed the first poem and encouraged me to write more. it's been a real pleasure.


End file.
